Dr. Thomas Mengel
Thomas Mengel, PhD, is accredited Humanist Chaplain with Humanist Canada, Cofounder of the Killick Coast North Seniors Co-operative, the Sunrise Funeral Co-operative in Newfoundland and Labrador, and a Retired Professor of Leadership Studies at the University of New Brunswick. A theologian, historian, computer scientist, and professional futurist, he has over 30 years of experience facilitating learning in leadership and project management.
Since retiring to Pouch Cove in 2023, Thomas has turned his leadership scholarship toward co-operative community development. In 2024, he cofounded the Killick Coast North Seniors Co-operative, a nonprofit community service co-operative whose volunteers help residents of Bauline, Flatrock, and Pouch Cove age well at home, and the Sunrise Funeral Co-operative, the first member-owned funeral co-operative in the province. He serves on the boards of both.
He volunteers with the Nav-CARE palliative care navigation program and the pastoral care team of NL Health Services, and in 2025 he cofounded the NL Chapter of Humanist Canada. He received his chaplaincy accreditation in July 2026 and is also a certified life celebrant with Life Celebrants International.
In Humanist Perspectives, he argued that the AI ethics of Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, closely match humanist values on biased algorithms, mass surveillance, and autonomous weapons, and he urged humanists to press for democratic, accountable AI governance. Read ‘Magnificent Humanity’: Humanist Principles in a Papal Encyclical? — Human Dignity, AI, and Cooperation and Book Review: Humanism: Canadian Perspectives by Humanist Canada.
His recent essays explore co-operation, compassion, and humanism. Read The Future is Cooperative: What might it look like and how do we get there? and Broken Open—and Emerging More Whole: Loss, Joy, and Reinvention through Community, both in Communities magazine. He also wrote From Concept to Implementation: Co-operative Community Design for the Future for Creativity Matters, the online journal of the Atlantic Centre for Creativity.
Thomas taught leadership studies and project management from 2003, joining the University of New Brunswick’s Renaissance College (now the School of Leadership Studies) as Associate Professor in 2005. He received tenure in 2009 and retired on March 1, 2023. He also supervised Master’s and PhD students.
In 2006, he was part of the Renaissance College team that received the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education’s Alan Blizzard Award for Outcomes-Based Learning at a Whole Program Level. Earlier, he taught in the MBA in Project Management at Athabasca University, at the University of Victoria’s School of Public Administration, and in the Master of Arts in Leadership at Trinity Western University. He has been a Fellow of the Project Research Institute at Athabasca University since 2011 and was a Visiting Professor at the business school of Umeå University in 2011.
His research centers on Values-Oriented Leadership, a framework grounded in Viktor Frankl’s logotherapy, in which he holds a four-year professional certification from the Institute for Logotherapy and Existential Analysis in Tübingen and Vienna. With Janice Thomas, he coauthored Preparing Project Managers to Deal with Complexity — Advanced Project Management Education in the International Journal of Project Management, cited more than 340 times in Scopus.
Read Outcome-based Project Management Education for Emerging Leaders: A Case Study of Teaching and Learning Project Management and Bringing Creativity Back to Entrepreneurship Education: Creative Self-Efficacy, Creative Process Engagement, and Entrepreneurial Intentions.
As a futurist, Thomas links futures studies with leadership education, having learners imagine future leadership and build personal scenarios. He edited Leadership for the Future: Lessons from the Past, Current Approaches, and Future Insights (2021), with contributors including our Timothy E. Dolan, Roger Spitz, and Verne Wheelwright. In 2023, he coauthored Futures Studies: Contributions and Sources for the Alternative Planetary Futures Institute with our Victor V. Motti, Jerome C. Glenn, and Mara Di Berardo, writing on the future of leadership and governance.
Read Learning Portfolios as Means of Evaluating Futures Learning: A Case Study at Renaissance College, Co-Housing NL (Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada)—Piloting Affordable Housing Within a Sustainable Community Context, coauthored with Wendy Reid Fairhurst, and his review of Motti’s A Transformation Journey to Creative and Alternative Planetary Futures.
He is a member of the Association of Professional Futurists, the World Futures Studies Federation, the World Future Society, and the International Leadership Association. Listen to EP 114: Dancing with Gravity – Thomas Mengel. Read Dr. Thomas Mengel, APF: Futures and Fictions.
Thomas earned his Dipl. Päd. (M.Ed.) in Adult Education in 1982 from the University of Bamberg, followed by his Lic. Theol. and Dr. Theol. in Church History and Religious Studies in 1983. His dissertation was published as Das Schicksal der schlesischen Frauenklöster während des Dritten Reiches und 1945/46 (1986). He earned his M.A. in History and International Relations in 1985 from the University of Toronto and his Dipl. Inform. (MSc) in Computer Science in 1993 from FernUniversität in Hagen.
From 1987 to 2005, he worked as a corporate trainer and manager in software development and project management in Germany and Canada. Since 1994, he has consulted for financial institutions, government organizations, and private corporations, and between 2012 and 2022 he led his consultancy ValuesXplorer Inc. In 2024, he became a Certified Co-op Professional through Co-operatives First.
Originally from Germany, Thomas lives in Pouch Cove with his wife, Marion, and hikes and bikes the East Coast Trail. He writes fiction and nonfiction in German and English.
Visit his homepage, University of New Brunswick profile, Writers’ Union of Canada profile, and Humanist Canada chaplain listing.